Breakthrough Schools, Menlo Park Academy land $10M in state grants for West Side expansion

The former Joseph & Feiss Co. garment factory sits empty, covered with graffiti, on Cleveland's west side. Menlo Park Academy, a public charter school for gifted children, just received a $4.6 million grant from the state to renovate the building. The school bought it in 2015 and plans to renovate it in time for the 2017-18 academic year.

(Michelle Jarboe/The Plain Dealer)

The old Willard School at W. 93rd Street and Marginal Road in the Cudell neighborhood will be home to new E-Prep and Village Prep charter schools.

That school already opened for its first year with just kindergarten and first grade. It plans to add grades over the next few years through fourth grade, then add a new Entrepreneurship Preparatory School in 2017 that will cover fifth through eighth grades.

Those grants are more than double what the state granted to any of the other six schools sharing $17 million in awards from the $25 million pool that Gov. John Kasich and the state legislature set aside for charter facilities in the 2015 state budget.

Breakthrough will also receive about $350,000 for work at Entrepreneurship Preparatory School Woodland Hills and $1.6 million for work at Citizens Academy Southeast.

See below for a list of all schools in Ohio receiving money and for descriptions of the projects.

"We're very excited," said Breakthrough spokesman Lyman Millard. "This is a really good opportunity to serve a lot more kids in Cleveland."

The state money will be a "huge help" toward Menlo Park's rehabilitation of the former clothing factory, said Teri Harrison, the school's co-founder and board chairwoman. She said the money may let the school add improvements to the plan could end up costing $15 million.

"It's going to make an immense difference on the overall project and what we're able to deliver in the long run," she said.

A rendering shows the Joseph & Feiss Co. garment factory, restored as the new home of Menlo Park Academy.

Located at 14440 Triskett Road in the former school of St. Mel Parish, it started started in 2008 with 38 students. It now has 360. It bought the Joseph & Feiss property in 2015 with the hope of expanding the school to have about 750 students from kindergarten through eighth grade.

The Willard School project in the Cudell and West Boulevard area will be Breakthrough's furthest expansion on the West Side. Out of 11 schools in the high-performing network, 10 are on the east side. The Near West Intergenerational School in Ohio City is the only school Breakthrough has on the West Side now.

The Head Start preschool program that already uses part of the building will remain in the building that was once part of the Cleveland school district.

Millard said Breakthrough renovated just a portion of the 120-year-old building before opening this year, but still must update more of it to add grades.

The grants for the Woodland Hills site, where Breakthrough operates a Village Prep and E-Prep, will convert additional parts of that building to classrooms.

The Citizens Academy Southeast grant will help cover the costs of moving that schools from one building to another in the same neighborhood. The school now leases part of the